Dragon Quest V: Hand of the Heavenly Bride — A Hand To Be Grasped

If you’ve been reading this blog for a while, you may have noticed that I don’t write as many reviews here as I used to. That’s not because I don’t play many games these days (I do), but that I’m usually always late to the party. I have a pretty pathetic, towering backlog of games here, which makes me fashionably late to the newest game. Is that a good idea for a blog that focuses on recent developments? No! But talking about a lot of recent games wouldn’t help matters here, since there are over 30 other sites doing that same exact thing. And I’m probably underestimating the entire number.

So here, have a review of the DS version of Dragon Quest V: Hand of the Heavenly Bride, which released back in February 2009 — the third iteration of the game (following the SNES and PS2 versions from 1992 and 2004, respectively), but the first one given an official localization courtesy of Square Enix. And you thought the Final Fantasy III situation was bad! I had no choice but to break my usual pattern and review this, because it’s that good.

Bianca’s got that right. Technological deficiencies are no hindrance for pretty aesthetics.

While its gameplay is mostly typical of the DQ franchise and the JRPG genre as a whole, consisting of “you hit them, they hit you” turn-based action, it’s the story that really shines. This game actually has plot threads and twists that you don’t see coming. And it does these deceptively as well, as from its outset you’d think you were in for the usual endearing-though-predictable doldrums that seem to typify the genre these days (though most of them focus on the “predictable” aspect). You start the game with your main character, whose name is of your choosing, a young man who begins his adventure with his father, Pankraz, at the tender age of six-years-old. It’s one big coming-of-age story; the story of a man who presses onward despite the trials and tribulations that lay before him.

Yes, that means this game, a remake of a game from 1992, has a better story and characters than most RPGs made these days — exempting any franchise entries with the name “Mario” or “Shin Megami Tensei” in the title. Be ashamed, JRPG developers.

Don’t want to venture through the main quest. That’s OK! There are plenty of other things to occupy your time.

Saying the gameplay here is “mostly typical” is kind of a lie, actually. It has the usual turn-based battle system that DQ games usually have, but there’s an interesting twist here. You don’t travel around with too many human characters at your party throughout most of the game, so you compensate for that by recruiting monsters. Calling it “Pokemon-esque” is nearly fallacious as well, as this game predates Game Freak’s venerable franchise by quite a few years, but it’s the best comparison. Unlike Pokemon, though, recruiting monsters here is nowhere near as simple; whether they join you or not is a completely random affair after you defeat one, and not all of them can be recruited. It’s certainly a little more archaic than what you’d see in the Pokemon games, and can be frustrating when there’s that one monster that you want to recruit that never seems interested in joining you, but it gets the job done. Couple in the fact that some of them have level caps, and it’s almost enough to have you searching for a strategy guide.

The DS version certainly isn’t going to wow you as much as the PS2 version is graphically, thanks to this version being on lower tech. Its looks are as good as you would predict thanks to it using the same graphics system that powered Dragon Quest VII and IV. Ah, if only Square Enix USA hadn’t given a crap about DQ until VIII came along.

(For those of you counting: we also missed the first Rocket Slime title and Dragon Quest Monsters: Caravan Heart because of Square Enix’s initial ambivalence. Both were Game Boy Advance titles.)

If you’ve played the previous games recently localized by Square Enix in the main series, you’ll notice the different tone in localizations between the three (not including VIII, since it’s not as reliant on text). DQIV, for instance, had some incredibly heavy accent use, and while some fans liked it fine (I did), you had plenty of others complaining — some very loudly — at the complete opposite end of the spectrum. They’re also present here as well; they’re not quite as severe as IV, but they’re more severe than IX’s. They’re perfectly understandable when being read with a little work, as they give every unique character, including NPCs, personality. It’s something that couldn’t be as easily conveyed thanks to the lack of voice acting that VIII had, but Plus Alpha Translations manages to make that work.

Representing both ends of the attitude spectrum.

Oh, and speaking of localizations, they actually translated the entire game this time! After numerous complaints about how it was removed from DQIV, the Party Talk feature has been left in DQV on DS. Upon using it frequently (as in “during every single opportunity“) here, I understood why so many fans were upset about its removal from IV, and merely thinking about how that happened made me very pissed every time I thought about it. You don’t get quite as many opportunities to use it here, as your monsters will always say the same thing every time upon consulting them, but it’s always worth hearing what your human companions’ responses are to everything.

DQV also has some of series composer Koichi Sugiyama’s best work, with some amazing town and dungeon themes. The music on display in the DS version is also a point of contention for fans of the PS2 version, as the latter replaced the SNES music with a fully orchestral soundtrack. The DS, of course, couldn’t handle that, so we had to settle with mere remixes. They still sound great, though. It was still easy for me to realize that “Tower of Death” is one of the most haunting dungeon themes I’ve ever heard, for instance. Upon comparing the entirety of DQIV and V’s soundtrack to DQIX‘s, you can see why a lot of people think Sugiyama’s best days are behind him.

(And no, that has nothing to do with him proving how insane he is in his free time. There’s no direct source for that in English, but search for his name and “Nanking Massacre” simultaneously.)

Some battles require strategy, others require you cross your fingers.

I would really like to think that most JRPG developers will someday look at their forebearers to see what they could do better, because games like this prove how much better their games could be from a storyline and character development perspective. During some particular point in the past, things went horribly awry for JRPGs; while they made some progression gameplay-wise, they’re still stuck in the past story-wise — barring a few exceptions, of course. It’s a shame, but we’ll always have our classics, right?